Government officers are using new technological tools featuring real-time location data and license-plate tracking to detain immigrants and investigate protesters. Activists, outmatched in force and spending, are using burner phones and donated dashboard cameras to counter those efforts, recording masked agents in action and compiling lists of names and badge numbers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and other law enforcement personnel.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/01/15/ice-activists-doxing/
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In response, the government has charged activists under criminal statutes and tried to compel online platforms to reveal the identities of activists using their sites. In one such case, a federal judge in San Francisco held a hearing Wednesday over whether to throw out ICE’s demand that Meta identify users of anonymous Facebook and Instagram accounts that tracked raids in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
We still donate monthly to the ACLU. Maybe we should give more.
"The American Civil Liberties Union, which is defending the anonymous account holder, is asking that the subpoenas issued to Meta be quashed on First Amendment grounds. “This isn’t being litigated because of any criminal activity but rather because the government wants to tamp down on people who are opposing this activity,” ACLU attorney Ari Shapell said. "
Since federal authorities got Apple and Google to take down some raid-tracking apps such as ICEBlock, activists have turned to more obscure sites and direct methods. During the Los Angeles enforcement surge last year, they posted fliers around town bearing the names and faces of ICE agents.
ICE, for its part, is taking pictures of people on the street and using an app called Mobile Fortify to check the images against databases, officials said. And it is wielding its $30 billion budget, tripled by Trump’s sweeping 2025 budget legislation, to expand its surveillance capabilities with data from license-plate readers, social media scrapers and location-tracking services.